Wednesday, February 13, 2013

Enter the rustically inviting house in Loxahatchee on Collecting Canal road. Artist sketches on the front porch in pastels and pencil. Folk musicians strum and sing seated nearby. Sign in the guest book and buy raffle ticket to support endangered animal species housed two lots down in exotic zoo.

Inside, scan the room, sighting the illustrator I came to see. http://rollinmcgrail.com/Rollin/Home.html We hug and I introduce my friend who is interested in decorating her daughter's room with her whimsically sophisticated pen and ink creations. The celebrated New Yorker artist's son greets me with a polite peck on the cheek.

We are in the art world. There's Millie McCoy, donor and arts supporter, whose husband directs the local croquet team at the National Croquet Club across town. http://www.croquetnational.com/ There's the metal sculptor who created a scandalous mermaid that was too much for Wellington's family values and was banished to the outer limits of Lake Worth's Art district. http://www.normangitzen.com/

Turning away, I'm not sure how much is showing and covered. Instead of long hair, she is several (50?) shades of grey, paint on skin to resemble the potter's material called Raku. It's like faux finish, crackled and marbled with a lustrous patina. But applied from foot to forehead, it does not pass for clothing. Someone shield the children. One father does so. Other boys ogle.

She's a 'model', expressionless and cold, avoiding eye contact with her admirers, meant to depict a live version of pottery. The kind of artists' model that would sit for you to sketch in Painting and Drawing Class (which I never did). I practiced Beethoven. My friend majored in art and seemed much more comfortable with the concept.

Now she walks from the back room, past the porch to the front yard. My friend says she has something covering the essentials, but I wonder why no one states the obvious, like in the fairy tale, "The Emperor Has No Clothes!"

After all I'm just a church girl trying to get out in the community and appreciate visual arts. The men, probably dragged by their wives being very visual suddenly are appreciating this art; instant pottery admirers, aficionados lining up for photo ops with this live clay 'sculpture.'

She is stealing the show.

The Art Show.

All eyes on her.

Distracted, we try to enjoy the appetizers, the baskets made of palm tree pods, the unique silver and gemstone jewelry. I engage the potter in a discussion about her techniques and materials. "Are you a potter", she asks? "No," I say, " but my sons work the wheel and they have made pots out of this beautiful mottled medium called

Raku."

The show organizer takes a picture of the potter with the live model and I heard the artist say,after adjusting poses and feeling the attention focused on something other than her skill, What am I? Invisible? I am the potter after all, seemingly annoyed.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

I didn't notice an expiration date
or an estimated shelf life
attached to this thing called

Marriage.

Where 5 out of 10 couples for whatever reason, definitely state "It's over." "My marriage is over."

As if it were a 3 act play or a football game. Or say, "I'm done," as if it were dinner or homework.

Our cellphone contracts are held in higher esteem than our marriage covenants, and are more feared of breaching, than the sacred vow, the bond,

----The Knot ----

untied like a common shoelace these days.

At what point do we decide that it's over and hopeless? And how do we know that the struggles, tears, arguments, sleepless nights, disillusionment, emotional pain are not common to all couples?
We are fraught with flaws as individuals, so why would we ever expect perfection as a couple?

Does the mere thought of divorce mean we must? When our humanity rudely interrupts, is it time to jump ship, walk out ? Or to stay committed to each other's emotional, physical and spiritual wholeness.

Is not that all part of it? The learning, self-examination, the honing, the fire of of refiner, the hammer of the black smith, the chisel of the sculptor, the facet slice of the jeweler, all making the two of us a thing of beauty and glory.

We run from the discomfort of what will do us best and make us pure and attractive and loving. Like the author of "Sacred Marriage" said: What if the purpose of marriage was not to make us happy, but to make us holy?

The substance of self-sacrificing marital love does not curdle like cream, or rust like tin, or crumble like sand, or dissolve like jello.

"It is over" infers a built-in obsolescence, an unknown time clock (bomb?) ticking away toward a predestined demise written in invisible ink on the marriage certificate, like a date-stamped label.

Holy Bond Expires: --/--/----

Discard Spouse after --/--/----

The truth is, many of us made it happen. We neglected the garden. We spent too much time serving ourselves instead of our spouse. Pursuing our own interests instead of theirs. Building our name, because family and love wasn't enough. We stayed up late instead of sleeping with our spouse. We did Girls'/Boys' night out instead of Date night. We did too many things alone instead of together, because we love ourselves more than our spouse. Or we fell in love with another.

But we phrase it in a way that skirts individual responsibility for the failure and puts the blame on the idea of marriage, as if it were removed from human cause and effect, inanimate and detached.

Culture has almost romanticized Divorce, ironically. It's
popular to be unattached and free again. There are Hallmark cards and t-shirts
proclaiming new-found singleness and availability.

We forgot the vows:

for better or worse

in sickness and health

for richer or poorer

...till death...

More than a promise, business contract or handshake, social agreement, an RSVP. The sacred covenant was meant to hold a little more water than the simple
'yes'.

Yet we accept it without question, but not without grief, when the respected author or the beloved songstress or the revered pastor go and say it. Say their marriage has ended.

My father used to say, Divorce doesn't solve anything.
I get it now. It just removes the problem from our four walls. But the
issues get worse usually and follow us all the days of our life. What a
rude awakening that they don't go away just because our spouse does.
And an even ruder awakening when the second marriage adds even more
problems of a blended family and relational baggage.

Long time friend said she was going through it but didn't recommend it. If parting is so painful, why proceed? Somehow the present struggle of a crisis marriage feels worse than the anticipated severance. What we don't know is that it feels like muscle ripped from bone. Muscle ripped from bone. Excruciating. I've literally seen twice-married couples sob in remorse that more effort wasn't made to save the first marriage. Sometimes it's hardness of heart, which I have felt acutely and know is lethal to love.

I don't judge.

It just makes me really sad.

What is the framework for dealing with substance abuse and mental illness in a home? My utmost empathy to those dealing with these dilemmas. I have no advice, but to pray they can bear the lonely path they walk. It's the trivial reasons that are so boggling, like 'finding ones' self' or that illusive happiness. What a burden we place on our partners when we expect them to be God, the only Source of our joy and happiness. And what unnecessary disappointment we bring upon ourselves.

Barring abuse and infidelity, can we believe in the power of God to revive the lifeless? To bring a second wind to the tired. Spark and spring and light to love.

It can be renewed.

It could happen. We've forgotten that He is the God of the impossible. The One who hates divorce because of the perpetual suffering it brings, can certainly supply the means to sustain and save a marriage. But, somehow the Divine is made impotent in the face of those human words, "It's over." We deem them more absolute than His truth and stronger than His capability.

Why not say right back, "No, my friend, it's not? It's not over at all."

But it may take time and
trust and
forgiveness
waiting and
forgiving
and agonizing change
and forgiveness.

Monday, February 11, 2013

You've heard them all from the early 70's screen hits like Jaws and Star Wars to the more recent Harry Potter and Lincoln. John Williams turned 81 yesterday, on my birthday. We took in a tribute at the Kravis Center played by the Palm Beach pops, conducted by Bob Lappin.

Does he ever stop creating and composing? Not likely, at this rate. Here are a few tunes we heard last Friday that you might be able to hum along to:

Olympic Fanfare (1984 LA Olympics, I heard it live back then at the Hollywood Bowl)